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"Comfortably Numb" (working
title The Doctor) is a song by the English progressive
rock band Pink Floyd, which was released
on the 1979 double album The Wall. It was also released as a
single in the same year, with
"Hey You" as the B-side.
It is one of only three songs on the album for which writing
credits are shared between Roger Waters
and David Gilmour – the melody and
most of the music on "Comfortably Numb" was written by Gilmour,
while Waters contributed the lyrics and some additional notes.
"Comfortably Numb" is one of the most famous Pink Floyd songs, and
is known especially for its guitar
solos. In 2004, the song was ranked #314 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All
Time. Playwright Tom Stoppard said
he wrote most of his Tony Award winning
The Coast of Utopia
during repeated listenings of the song. It is the last song to ever
be performed by Waters, Gilmour, Wright and Mason together.

History

While most songs on The Wall were written by Waters alone,
most of the music for "Comfortably Numb" was written by David Gilmour, who originally recorded the
instrumental demo during the latter stages of recording his
first solo album, hoping to
find some later use for it. Gilmour later brought his demo of it to
The Wall sessions.

The song is one of two tracks on The Wall which are
completely freestanding and do not fade into or out of an adjacent
track. (The other freestanding song is "Mother".) This is because on the
original LP there was a hiatus of
the music as side three of the album finished.

According to Rolling Stone
the lyrics came from Roger Waters' experience when he was injected
with tranquillizers for stomach
cramps by a doctor prior to playing a Pink Floyd show in
Philadelphia on the band's 1977 tour for the Animals album. "That was the longest
two hours of my life," Waters said. "Trying to do a show when you
can hardly lift your arm." The experience gave him the idea which
became the lyrics to this song.

Waters and Gilmour disagreed about how to record the song as
Gilmour preferred a more grungy style for the verses. In the end,
Waters' preferred opening to the song and Gilmour's final solo were
used on the album. Gilmour would later say, "We argued over
'Comfortably Numb' like mad. Really had a big fight, went on for
ages."

Plot

As with the other songs on The Wall, "Comfortably Numb" tells a
portion of a story about Pink, the album's protagonist. This song
has to do with Pink's battle to handle the world. He is forced to
turn to drugs to cope with his problems.

Film version

A large group consisting of Pink's manager (played by Bob Hoskins), the hotel manager (played by
Michael Ensign), paramedics, and
roadies burst into Pink's hotel room to find an unconscious Pink
sitting in a chair. The hotel manager does not take kindly to
Pink's untidiness, but Pink's manager insists that "he's an
artist". After injecting a drug into Pink's arm, the paramedics
drag Pink out of the hotel and to his limousine.

He is then transported to a concert at which he was scheduled to
play. Flashbacks of Pink's childhood are cut into the scene. In the
flashback, a young Pink finds a wild rat and
shows it to his overprotective mother. Her negative reaction
towards the rodent causes Pink to hide the rat in a nearby shed.
Pink later catches a fever that keeps him bed-ridden until the next
morning. The next day, Pink returns to the shed, only to find that
the rat has died in his absence, forcing Pink to dump the body into
the nearby river, representing his loneliness.

During this time, the drug causes Pink to hallucinate that his body
is decaying. He sees himself as a child walking in a field in his
room and touching his TV, then walking away. It then cuts to a
scene where Pink reacts to the drug and tears up his apartment.
Upon being inserted into the police car, Pink tears off his
diseased shell to reveal a Nazi-esque attire.

Guitar solos

This song features two guitar solos by
David Gilmour. In 1989 the readers of the Pink Floyd fanzine
The Amazing Pudding
voted this song the best Floyd song of all time. David Gilmour's
solo was rated the 4th best guitar solo of all-time, by
Guitar World magazine, in a
reader poll. Also on Guitar World there are details on David
Gilmour's "Comfortably Numb" solo stating that the solo (most
likely the outro solo) was pieced together from several other solos
that Gilmour had been experimenting with at the time. In August
2006, it was voted the greatest guitar solo of
all time in a poll by listeners of digital radio station Planet Rock.

Live performances

Pink Floyd

During the 1980–81 The Wall tour, where a giant wall was
constructed across the stage during the performance, the song was
performed with Roger Waters dressed as a doctor at the bottom of
the wall, and David Gilmour singing and playing guitar from the top
of the wall on a raised platform with spotlights shining from
behind him. According to David Gilmour the final solo was one of
the few opportunities during those concerts that he could be free
to improvise completely. Gilmour also revised the verses to his
preferred more grungy approach when the song was played on 1990s
Pink Floyd tours after Waters left the band.

When the post-Waters Pink Floyd performs the song without Waters,
the verse vocals are arranged for harmonies, rather than attempt to
imitate Waters's voice. In both 1987-88 and 1994, these vocals were
performed by Richard Wright, Guy Pratt and Jon Carin.

In December 1988, a video of the live performance from Delicate Sound of Thunder
reached #11 on MTV's Top 20 Video Countdown. The video was two
minutes shorter than the album version and the video clip had some
different camera angles as opposed to the released home video
version.

A
10-minute version of "Comfortably Numb" was performed at Earls
Court, London on October 20, 1994, as part of
the Division Bell
tour. The P*U*L*S*E video release edited out
approximately 1:14 minutes of the ending solo . (The original pay
per view video has the unedited version).

Pink Floyd reunited briefly, complete with Waters, to perform at
the Live 8 concert in Hyde Park, London in
July 2005. The set consisted of four numbers, of which Comfortably
Numb was the last. It is widely considered among fans to have been
the highlight of the entire event.

David Gilmour

Gilmour has performed the song during each of his solo tours.

In his 1984 tour to promote his album "About Face", the set list referred to the song as
"Come On Big Bum". The vocals during the verses were performed by
band members Gregg Dechart and Mickey Feat.

Waters
subsequently performed the song at the "Guitar Legends" festival in
Spain in 1991 (guest vocals by Bruce Hornsby) and at the Waldon Woods benefit
concert in Los
Angeles in 1992 (guest vocals by Don
Henley)

The Scissor Sisters recorded a
disco-oriented version released in January
2004 on Polydor. The track was mixed by
Canadian electronic musician
and DJ/producer Tiga and featured a
falsetto vocal by lead singer Jake Shears. This release reached #10 in the
UK Singles Chart, giving the group
their first hit and becoming the most successful cover of a Pink
Floyd song to date in the UK. David Gilmour and Nick Mason expressed a liking for the group, and
Roger Waters is said to have congratulated the Scissor Sisters on
the version. Shears was invited by Gilmour to sing "Comfortably
Numb" with him in some 2006 shows, but was dropped at the last
moment to Shears' public disappointment. This cover received a
Grammy nomination for Best Dance Recording,
but lost to "Toxic" by Britney Spears

In 2005Dar
Williams included a version with on her album My Better Self, duetting on the track
with Ani DiFranco. "I always thought a
woman should record it," Dar Williams explains, "so I decided to do
it, but I thought it needed another woman. Ani was my dream choice
and she just nailed it," Williams says. "The song is a commentary
on who we are in the aftermath of the last election, no matter who
you voted for. On one level it is about a dream which seems to have
died in our society and the ultra convenient numbing I am
witnessing these days."